Pygmalion

Tuesday 18 May 2010 16.29 EDT
First published on Tuesday 18 May 2010 16.29 EDT

The original Pygmalion transformed a lump of stone into a living, breathing woman, in what might be considered history's first cosmetic makeover. The programme for Greg Hersov's production of George Bernard Shaw's play matches images of the mythic sculptor with contemporary Pygmalions Trinny and Susannah, alongside that latter-day lump of stone Susan Boyle. Though Hersov is careful not to push these parallels too far, his staging vividly brings to mind the callous egotism of modern-day Svengalis.

If Eliza Doolittle's original idea of redemption is to establish her own little flower shop, today it would almost certainly be to appear on television. There is a familiar frisson of voyeuristic discomfort when she first presents herself in the professor's study, squirming and scornful and standing on her dignity, while the great man assesses her with the supercilious disdain of a talent-show judge.

Shaw described the play as a "romance in five acts" – though he may have been lying about the romantic part. Hersov's reading unflinchingly targets the play's anti-sentimental core. Simon Robson's Higgins is a fascinating creation: uncouth, intoxicated with his own genius and only capable of perceiving people as aggregates of interesting phonemes, like an Edwardian ancestor of television's dysfunctional diagnostician Dr Gregory House. Men of such cold intellect are often in want of a softening influence; here, Terence Wilton's Colonel Pickering assumes the role of avuncular sidekick.

Cush Jumbo's Eliza puts up a remarkable fight, never losing her sharpness as her rough-diamond persona is smoothed into a cut-glass accent. Her comic instinct is unerring; her composure never falters in the moments when her diction lets her down; and her ultimate rejection of her mentor carries such emotional force that Higgins's admission that she has "wounded him to the heart" conveys the shock of discovering that he has one.

The impressive Gaye Brown stands for no nonsense as Higgins's imperious mother, and Ian Bartholomew's slippery Mr Doolittle indicates that Eliza is very much her father's daughter: his unwilling, lottery-winner-like ascent to the ranks of the middle class becomes proof that money can buy unhappiness. Bartholomew's acerbic appearances come very close to stealing the show – though does his daughter stand by and let him snatch the glory? Not bloody likely.